IS SIX GREATER THAN SEVEN?
We may have had to wait a perplexingly long time for Nikon to get its act together with a high-end mirrorless camera system, but after testing the flagship Z 7… well, all is forgiven, isn’t it? It’s a brilliant interpretation of the mirrorless brief while still avoiding too much of a culture shock for D-SLR traditionalists. Even if you’re deeply in love with your D850, I defy you not to be seduced by the Z 7… it does everything just as well, but is smaller, lighter, faster and quieter. There’s been some nit-picking about the AF tracking performance, but frankly it’s nothing more than nit-picking.
But wait, there’s more. The Z 7 was, of course, launched along with the Z 6 which shares exactly the same chassis, body and control layout, but is built for speed… more speed, that is. Nikon calls the Z 7 “The Perfectionist” (which, in truth, really isn’t too much hyperbole) and the Z 6 “The All-Rounder”. Side-by-side you can’t tell them apart (except for the model badge), but on the inside there’s a few significant differences which make the Z 6 faster than its sibling… and quite a bit cheaper into the bargain. We suspect that the Z 6 is going to be the volume seller of the pair because, let’s face it, not everybody needs (or even wants) 47 megapixels worth of resolution, and you’re looking at an outlay of at least $6500 for the body with the Nikkor Z 24-70mm f4.0 standard zoom and the must-have FTZ converter for all your F mount lenses. You can lop two grand off the bottom line if you opt for the Z 6 in the same kit configuration and you’re still getting a lot of what the Z 7 offers, including the all-metal weather-sealed bodyshell, 3.68 megadots EVF, touchscreen monitor, five-axis sensor-shift image stabilisation, 4K video with a 10-bit HDMI output, and all the usual higher-end Nikon image processing functions.
LESS IS MORE
The sensor – designed by Nikon, but fabricated by somebody else – is still a 35mm format backside-illuminated (BSI) CMOS that’s mated with Nikon’s latest ‘Expeed 6’ processor, but now with an optical low-pass filter. The total pixel count is 25.28 million, giving an effective count of 24.5 million.
In reality, this is still quite sufficient resolution for numerous applications, ensuring good definition and detailing at the lower sensitivity settings in prints up to A0 in size. If you’re familiar with
